How Did Work-Life Balance in the U.S. Get So Awful?

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/how-did-work-life-balance-in-the-us-get-so-awful/276336/



The United States is the greatest country in the history of everything, if you just listen to its leaders, and a disgrace among developed countries, if you just read international surveys. Our health care system is famously expensive and inaccessible. Our education system is famously broken. Oh, and our income inequality? It's just famous.

The OECD Better Life Index, released last week, feeds the American instinct toward both jingoism and self-deprecation. In housing access and family wealth, it concludes that the U.S. really is the best country in the world. But we rank 28th among advanced nations in the category of "work-life balance," ninth from the bottom.

This raises a thorny question: If we're so rich, why are we working so hard that we don't even have time to cherish the fruits of our productivity?

There are some simple reasons why the U.S. places far below Scandinavia and other European countries among work-life metrics. We work longer hours to make all that money. So we have less down time. Also, we don't have national laws, like mandatory paternal leave, that alleviate the burden on working moms.

[ananda]

1. 99 percent of us are not so rich.

..

[bhikkhu]

6. Not true, on a global or historical scale

...which is what the OP is talking about. Stuff is one thing we have in abundance, but there's more to life, of course.

[Posteritatis]

2. I like(?) that that article was posted on a Saturday morning. (nt)

[brewens]

3. We've been looted! I also attribute it to what I call "house n!&&er syndrome". As when a slave

was given a position working indoors, just a little better than those in the fields, or say an old fashioned "upstairs servant".

People that are barely middle class-upper middle class are being controlled by fear. If they don't continue to work themselves half to death and support the crooks at the top, they will be dragged down to the lower class. They are told the poor people want to take what they've got.

Like a slave that was coerced into informing on any kind of rebellion, they react with fear and anger to something like OWS. Like the slave that was still a slave, even if he had it a little better, they are being screwed like the rest of us and just don't realize it.

Some salesman working sixty hours a week for a good salary, doesn't dare slow down. He'd probably blow the whistle on someone trying to unionize his company. Keep in good with the bosses, especially if he's close to retirement. All the while he's giving up the free hours of the best part of his life and it didn't have to be that way. Guys like that supported the looting since Reagan and hated anything liberal, even if it would have been in their best interest.

You wonder how much worse it has to get before people wake up?

[Avalux]

4. Well duh. The 'rich' aren't very many of 'us'. The rest work our asses off for them.

But that's really not a surprise, since this country has always been this way. My grandfather worked as a child laborer during the Great Depression; before our current labor laws there was not down time at all. And then there's the stuff - we are constantly being bombarded with pressure to buy stuff. Stuff we must have or we won't fit in.

Until the status quo and perceptions about how great it all is change, we will continue on the hamster wheel, while our stuff sits around us.

[marions ghost]

5. At one time in America

teachers and lawyers made roughly the same income. It was a long time ago and I don't have a memory of it. I've been told this.

The work-life balance--try Australia. They have that worked out.

[Populist_Prole]

7. Too many of my peers are "overtime whores" trying to finance an unrealistic lifestyle

And spinning the hamster wheel like mad, which while provides them some extra cash, makes management happy too, as they can underpay and under-staff. We make much less now ( due to concessions, and the general downward pressure on wages overall ) adjusted for inflation than ever, yet people will claw each other's eyes out to work the available overtime. I kid you not, many of my coworkers get absolutely giddy when they find out they can work 2, 3 , or even 4 double shifts during their workweek, and/work one or even both of their days off.

While some are doubtless hard-up due to situations beyond their control, most burn the candle at both ends to just have more stuff: Ugly McMansions filled with so many consumer gadgets they look like 'Best Buy' showrooms inside, Overly indulged kids with expensive activities that leave them little time for themselves, Driveways bursting with big new shiny vehicles. Disgusting...and they look the part too. And they all think anybody that wants to just "do your eight and hit the gate" are unambitious fools. Free time is a hated anathema to them. Stupid fools that just feed the monster.